Cultural Heritage Lecture Series continues at the Cultural Center on Jan.
25

The West Virginia Division of Culture and History will continue its Cultural
Heritage Lecture Series with filmmaker and producer Mimi Pickering
for Appalshop, Inc., on Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2006 at 7 p.m.,
in the Norman L. Fagan West Virginia State Theater at the Cultural Center, State
Capitol Complex in Charleston. Pickering will show her two films about the Buffalo
Creek disaster and give a talk entitled “Do Social Documentaries Influence
Anyone?” She will be joined by Jack Spadaro of Hamlin,
former superintendent of the U.S. Department of Labor’s National Mine
Health and Safety Academy, and the staff engineer for the governor’s 1972
inquiry on the disaster.

The Buffalo Creek Flood: An Act of Man (1975, 40 minutes) chronicles this 1972
disaster which killed 125 people and left 4,000 homeless when a coal-waste dam
collapsed at the head of a hollow in Logan County. Interviews with survivors,
representatives of union and citizen’s groups, and officials of the Pittston
Company are combined with actual footage of the flood and scenes of the ensuing
devastation. Last year, librarian of Congress John H. Billington chose the film
to be added to the National Film Registry.

Buffalo Creek Revisited (1984, 31 minutes) was filmed 10 years after the flood
and looks at “the second disaster on Buffalo Creek,” in which the
survivors’ efforts to rebuild the communities shattered by the flood are
thwarted. The film explores the psychology of disaster, the importance of community,
and the paradox of poor people living in a rich land.

Pickering has been producing films and videotapes at Appalshop since 1971.
Her documentaries often feature women as principle storytellers, focus on injustice
and inequity, and explore the efforts of grassroots people to deal with community
problems andwork for change. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and
two Kentucky Arts Council Fellowships, as well as media production grants from
the American Film Institute and the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities.

Other films Pickering has directed include Chemical Valley which was broadcast
on the PBS series POV; Dreadful Memories, which tells the life and times of
traditional singer and radical songwriter Sarah Ogan Gunning; and Hazel Dickens:
It’s Hard to Tell the Singer from the Song, a portrait of this National
Heritage Award-winner described by the Washington Post as “a living legend
of American music, a national treasure,” among others.

Pickering also directs Appalshop’s Community Media Initiative, which
works with grassroots groups and public interest organizations to develop and
implement communication strategies in support of social and economic justice
organizing and policy change.

Appalshop, Inc., is a multi-disciplinary arts and education center in Whitesburg,
Ky., producing original films, video, theater, music and spoken-word recordings,
radio, photography, multimedia and books. The center is dedicated to the proposition
that the world is immeasurably enriched when local cultures garner the resources,
including new technologies, to tell their own stories and to listen to the unique
stories of others.

For more information about the Cultural Heritage Series, call (304) 558-0162.
Next month’s talk will be on Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 7 p.m., and will feature
Ann Hagedorn, author of “Beyond the River: the Untold Story of the Heroes
of the Underground Railroad.”

The West Virginia Division of Culture and History, an agency of the West Virginia
Department of Education and the Arts, brings together the state’s past,
present and future through programs and services in the areas of archives and
history, the arts, historic preservation and museums. The Cultural Center is
West Virginia’s official showcase for the arts. Visit the Division’s
website at www.wvculture.org for more information about programs of the Division.
The Division of Culture and History is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action
Employer.

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Media Note: Mimi Pickering can be reached at Appalshop at (606) 633-0108 or
mpickering@appalshop.org